“Figures. All my life, I’ve fought against imperialism. And now, I am the expanding Russian front!” -Babylon 5, Ivonova-

_____

Mid afternoon of the next day, after an amount of sleep that didn’t quite feel right, a breakfast that made him feel like needed another six hour long nap, and petting a friendly dog at his door, James returned to the Lair.

And then, once there, he found he had very little to do.

Everything he’d told Vad last night before they’d left Texas for a library that existed beyond the boundaries of both time and sensible book titles was still true, though. A lot of the people that James normally spent time with, delving or otherwise, just weren’t around. Alanna had dropped by to say hi last night, saying something about helping her sister’s move, but James had been sleeping hard enough he only barely processed it happened. All four iterations of Anesh was still in a place called Colchester, which James technically recognized as a real city in England, and yet, couldn’t read the name properly to save his life.

A good chunk of their delvers were also out with injuries for one reason or another. Either going through the process of purging the wizard plague, or just not allowed to be active until cuts and bruises healed, or, in one case, waiting for their hand to heal from where a potion being tested had caused a few dozen slivers of glass to go into them.

Everyone else… had jobs. Recovery, who James didn’t really know a lot of people in anyway, kept working to turn magic into help. Currently, they were working with the people that were getting pulled out of the overgrown coal plants that had been old Priority Earth attack targets. Response was working on settling into their role as a kind of broad-spectrum help-provider, but with much less focus on the vigilantism. Research…

Research did some stuff. James conceded that they probably did quite a lot more than just identifying magic items, but he was having trouble keeping up with everything weird and wonderful in his life when it was just him and Anesh stealing a magic coffee machine from a single dungeon. At this point, if you told him that Research had constructed some kind of Mars base, James would believe it.

And then ask to go there.

He was pretty sure that wasn’t what they were doing, though. But the fact that it was a guess and not a certainty kind of spoke to how chaotically busy Research was.

It wasn’t like the members of the Order didn’t have a lot of downtime; between green orbs sometimes giving extra time or speeding up tasks, and just the nature of having a collective that valued personal time, people who worked in any of the Order’s three buildings got to take a lot of time to themselves. But James had noticed that people often didn’t make use of it, and managing burnout was one of the things on Karen’s Big List Of Issues To Address. She hadn’t labeled it that way, but James had when he’d found it on the server. And even when people were taking time off, they were often doing it with other people who were part of the Order, and talking about Order things, or just experimenting - or playing - with magic on their own.

It was a broad set of circumstances that encouraged a very social culture, even if that socialization was somewhat fluid. Right now, these circumstances, mixed with everyone who wasn’t around to give him anything else to do, had led to James hanging out in the Lair’s residential basement, with Arrush and Keeka.

“You look happy.” James said with an unrepressed smile as he joined them in the courtyard in front of the spatially folded apartment complex.

The place wasn’t finished, yet. Some asshole had interrupted the process of turning a sub basement into a flourishing garden by teleporting a bunch of infected victims into the Lair, and while it had been a week since, things had come up that left it a work in progress, being added to bit by bit instead of being done in a day as a large group project. Still, there was more greenery down here than most basements ever saw, and James found the two ratroaches on one of the stone benches tucked behind a crescent of bamboo and ivy that broke up the flat expanse of the space.

The bench was interesting on its own. To date, no one had found an absorbed blue power for either making furniture, or moving stone that wasn’t pavement around, so when they wanted to make garden furniture that worked for a multi-species community, they had to do it the hard way. Some people, like Bill, had taken the process as a challenge, which led to a semi-circle bench of poured and smoothed concrete that had ramps on each end and a trio of bowl shaped depressions spaced along its length for camracondas to curl up in without worrying about falling off.

Someone, probably a camraconda, had rapidly realized that their underground garden didn’t get rain, and had filled those spaces with throw pillows. It was very charming, in a kind of fairy garden way. And right now, Arrush was sitting on the bench, while Keeka had half curled himself in one of those softer depressions and half thrown himself across his boyfriend’s lap.

The smaller and newly reforged ratroach looked up at James words. “He does!” Keeka exclaimed, poking two of his soft claws from different arms up at Arrush’s chin. “Look at him! He looks so good.”

“He did… not mean that.” Arrush tried to tilt his head in a way that Keeka couldn’t poke him, and found it hard with the new flexibility on his boyfriend’s joints. His muzzle was cracked in what looked like a permanent goofy grin, though he did shift to wipe a line of his corrosive drool on the sleeve of his hoodie.

Keeka wasn’t, for once, wearing a hoodie. His arms, all four of them, were exposed to the pleasant air of the courtyard, a simple refitted tshirt and his familiar black skirt covering the rest of his slim form of black fur and chitin. “He did not mean that at first.” Keeka corrected Arrush. “But now he is thinking it, and so I am correct.” He tipped his snout up into the air, poking into Arrush’s chin in a smoothly affectionate motion.

His voice was bright and airy, excited and just a touch feminine. James laughed to hear him speak so easily. “Okay, I mean, he’s got me there.” He said, settling himself a little awkwardly on the large decorative rock in the middle of the small space. They weren’t exactly concealed here; there were gaps in the bamboo, the park wasn’t finished, and there were frequently people moving by from the apartments to the exits, but it felt separated and cozy anyway. It was also cast in early spring sunlight, despite being twenty-ish feet underground, which was nice. “I am now thinking about that. But no, I did mean you Keeka. You look… complete.”

“Thank you!” The ratroach twisted like a snake to roll over Arrush’s lap and face James. Then his voice lost some of the playfulness. “Thank you.” He repeated. “Do we say that enough? Thank you. For all of this.”

“Please don’t.” James winced, rubbing at one of his arms as he shifted his ass against the rock he was trying to find a comfortable spot on.

Arrush made a noise that was probably a laugh. “He… doesn’t like being… thanked.” He reminded Keeka. “Even…” the tan furred ratroach trailed off, staring down at his partner with unmistakable love in his eyes.

Shaking his head, Keeka inverted one of his back arms and pointed it at James almost accusingly. “Bad!” He said, adding to the sense James got that he was being judged somewhat. “Abdicating credit is dismissive to the feelings of the people you have helped!”

“I… okay, I am…” James held up a hand, dipping his head and pressing his eyes closed as he tried to make his brain catch up through sheer force of will. “Sorry, I am really not used to you talking like that. It’s nice.”

“It is.” Arrush agreed instantly.

James’ smile returned. “Yeah, it is. But also it’s throwing me off. Also where’d you pick that wisdom up from?”

“Therapy!” Keeka brought his arm back, the joint making a slight pop as he reoriented it toward his front so that he could wrap it around one of Arrush’s legs. “Speaking is easier now, yes. So many parts no longer hurt. Breathing is easier, so I can say longer sentences. Moving is painless, so I can form larger words. Every part works together. And all from you and Alanna choosing to ask us.” Keeka blinked his eyes in a cascading sequence, small dots of glowing tears forming in them, but not burning. “You should let me thank you, because I think it matters.”

James looked away, staring up at the stacked rows of back patios of the apartments that were visible over the plants. He didn’t quite know what to say to that, but… “okay.” He settled on. “Can’t really argue with that. And I guess helping people is what I want to be doing anyway.”

“He is very clever.” Arrush added, running one of his claws down Keeka’s back, his partner making a noise somewhere between a squeak and a chirp that James had never heard before.

“So…” James paused. “I have a weird feeling that this might be awkward to ask, but, what about you?” He asked Arrush anyway. “Are you planning to follow Keeka into a new body?”

It was interesting to James to watch Arrush go through a whole process of tension, anxiety, consideration, and then an actual answer that may or may not be true to what he was feeling. “I… will.” Arrush said, staring back down at Keeka. “Eventually. I am not… ready yet. But I will be.” He said the last part with the kind of conviction that most people reserved for swearing vengeance on their mortal enemies in the middle of a thunderstorm on a mountain peak. “Al-also… there are others. Ahead of me.”

James poked at his skulljack link, getting his brain to work through the systems of input and output until he could find the right file that a mostly untrained human like him could actually read. “Mmh. Yeah, Ishah has their change coming up next, huh? And… Ann?”

“She was… hurt.” Arrush said.

“Yeah, I mean, I knew she got injured, I just didn’t realize it was… huh. I’ll ask her about it when I see her next.” James felt guilty. Ann had gotten hurt temporarily confiscating the teleporter that was used to save his life. And while that did somewhat mean that she was contributing to a global utopia built on the back of magic…

He didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

A stupid and childish desire, maybe. But still. James sighed and closed down the file for upcoming shaper substance transformations, and promised to send Ann some kind of get well soon gift. As soon as he figured out what she liked. He could ask Nate, but Nate was busy, and would probably be wrong too.

“I just realized I know literally nothing about Ann.” James said, staring up at the ceiling and the skylight that let the sun in through the ground. “Which is kinda weird. She’s been here a while.”

“She lives here. And will be coming to the barbecue on Saturday. You can come too!” Keeka excitedly extended an invite.

It was tempting, but also, group socialization sounded exhausting. “I don’t live here.” James pointed out. Arrush and Keeka both just stared at him, with a mix of confusion, and disbelief. “Okay, fine. I’ll come to the thing.” He relented. “But I’m gonna hide in the bushes and avoid people.”

“That’s what I do all the time.” Another voice cut into the space that was semi-isolated by growing bamboo. James tilted his head back to see Ben walking up and leaning against his sitting rock. “Hey.”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Honestly, nothing.” Ben said with an easy shrug. “But I saw you guys hanging out and wanted to say hi.”

“Oh, yeah, hi.” James nodded. “I guess it doesn’t surprise me that you live down here, actually. I really need to get an apartment.”

“That, and I’m helping Bill and Mars bring dirt down. JP told me I have to take a break from rogue stuff for a day. So I’m doing this.” Ben glanced up and gave a friendly wave to Arrush and Keeka. “Making myself useful.”

Arrush made a noise like a wet growl, while Keeka gave Ben a small wave back. “Hello! We do not like you.” He said with the same happy tone his remade voice had been in this whole time.

“I… uh…” Ben straightened up, looking like he was unsure how to respond to that. “That’s kind of novel. I haven’t heard that since high school.”

James sighed. “Ben.” He chastised the designed-for-infiltration dungeon life form, who swore briefly as he realized his slip. “Okay, can I… can I take a guess at what’s going on here?” Arrush gave him a motion that James realized was a shrug with five different arms. “Um… wait, I just realized it could be one of two things. Is it that the first time Ben met us he was lying, and never apologized?” James asked Arrush directly.

“Hey, I did!” Ben protested, worriedly on the defensive.

Arrush, though, just shook his triangular head with a soft creaking of chitin. “Not… to me. But not that. It is… silly.” Arrush actually looked more embarrassed than angry.

Which caused James to take a second look at Keeka, who seemed actually irate. It was a bit hard to gauge ratroach emotions, but Keeka had remade himself with eyes that sparkled and a muzzle that twisted in expression without pain or thought to it. So he was pretty clear to read. “Okay. Then it’s because of what you are.” James said.

“‘Scuse me?” Ben’s glare transformed to a scrunched up confused visage rapidly. “Wait, what? Because I’m… you know…”

“Normal.” Arrush said it like a curse.

At that, Ben stopped abruptly, unfolded his arms, stopped scratching along the colored lines of his polo shirt like he could somehow draw something useful out of the pattern, and drooped. “I’m… normal?” He asked quietly.

“I think,” James said, “that what Arrush means is that you not only pass for baseline human, but that there might be a little jealousy that you just walked out of your dungeon, got on an international flight without even trying, came to our home, and started acting like you were meant to be here. And that everyone was cool with it.”

“I… but I…” Ben took a halting step back, looking like he was caught in a panic.

Dealing with a dungeon creation’s anxiety attack wasn’t actually what James had had in mind when he’d come to visit today. But he tried not to sigh, and motioned next to his rock. “Ben, sit. Take deep breaths.” He ordered before looking back at the duo on the bench. “Keeka, try not to be mean. Ben isn’t trying to be dismissive or an asshole.”

Keeka started, sitting up from Arrush’s lap and curling his tails around himself in the pillowed seat that he’d claimed. “I am being mean?” He asked, sounding smaller than before. Arrush started to reach out to him, but Keeka dipped his head, and looked at Ben, slumped against a decorative rock on the concrete floor of their modified basement. “Oh. I am being mean. Oh no, that was not what I meant!”

“‘S fine.” Ben muttered, making a gesture that might have been meant to be waving it off.

“You don’t… look fine…” Arrush rasped at him.

James was watching as Ben shrugged, but then didn’t say anything. “I think…” he said slowly, “I mean, okay, I get where this is coming from, right? Ben, I know this isn’t exactly uplifting, but you get why a lot of the ratroaches might be a little envious of you, yeah?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just didn’t think.” Ben sighed. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

“I am also sorry.” Keeka said. “It is easy to think you are not hurt.”

“Yeah.” Ben nodded, his breathing steadying, and James watched as Arrush also untensed and shifted his position slightly so that he could lean on his boyfriend a little. “It’s actually really hard to tell if I’m hurt. In general, I mean? Because I’m… It’s… sorry, I dunno if talking about this is rude or something.”

“Curious now.” Arrush grumbled, scratching one of his ancillary claws at the base of some of his antenna. “And I… won’t be upset.”

“Yeah, I also kind of want to know more about you, actually.” James said. “Like, from a purely curious standpoint, you’re the only member of your species we’ve even met.”

“As far as-“

James was already rolling his eyes. “As far as we know yes, thank you. But dude, you don’t even know half your own biology.”

Thunking his head against the decorative rock in a way that made James wince, Ben sighed. “It’s true. The injury thing… it’s not just emotional hurt. It’s any hurt. You know, I tripped once during a tactics training exercise? Nate was doing his drill sergeant impression, and I thought that he was trying to teach me some kind of lesson about pushing through pain or something, cause he kept yelling at me to get up and keep moving with the squad. Planner had to step in, because I kept flickering up on their mental schedule for hospital space. No one could tell I was bleeding out.”

“Holy shit.” James whispered.

“I think it’s because of what I was made to be.” Ben kept talking, holding a hand out and staring at the back of it. His voice was almost casual now, which… it was hard for the others to tell if that was because he was fine, or because they couldn’t tell he wasn’t. “I don’t actually know, obviously. But I can make anyone see me as a friend. Force it if I need to. Sometimes I wonder, if Arrush had been the first person to run into me in the Climb, would I look like you?” Ben dropped his arm and looked at Arrush and Keeka. “I don’t even know if I can change now. But I do know that people don’t like to see their friends hurt. So, you know…”

“So they don’t see you hurt.” Keeka had brought all four of his hands around to a single point, fidgeting with his digits in an organic loop. “I want to say sorry again, but better. I did not realize, you are like us more than I thought.”

“Eh. All things considered, you probably got the short end of the stick.” Ben shrugged. “Also I did technically lie to your boyfriend and never apologized. So, sorry about that Arrush?”

Arrush let out a wet sigh. “It… is fine.” He leaned back, letting some of the bamboo behind him press against his shoulders or poke at him with its leafy sprouts. “But…” he took a deep breath, “we are welcome here. I know. But only here. You can… go anywhere. It must be… nice.”

“Anywhere but home.” Ben gave a self-deprecating grin.

“Oh! We have that too!” Keeka sounded far too cheerful about that.

“Also, to be fair, I want to work on the ‘go anywhere’ thing.” James added. “Like, I know we talk a lot about building the future, but I want you to be able to go anywhere. I just don’t have a fucking clue where to start with it.”

Ben cocked an eyebrow at him. “Aren’t you the one that has all the plans for a new civilization?” He asked.

“Yeah, a new one.” James countered, shifting off the rock and starting to pace around, shoes echoing on the concrete floor. “I just don’t know how to approach the one that exists and say ‘yeah, hey, we have a new species here, there’s maybe fifty of them making them a minority of a single neighborhood much less a city, but everyone play nice’.” He looked at Arrush, and the ratroach saw a soul-deep anger in James’ eyes, though not aimed at him. “You should be able to walk around without being afraid.” James stated flatly. “Everyone should. There is no species requirement on which people should have fundamental rights.”

“No one here disagrees with that!” Keeka’s energetic voice softened James’ irritation with the world a little. There was just something inherently optimistic about the remade ratroach being able to speak, clearly and without pain. It also helped that he sounded cute.

James snapped his fingers and pointed at Keeka for emphasis. “No one here does. Even the interns-“

“Squires.” Ben interjected.

“No, because ‘squires’ are people who are actively shadowing knights and learning about things like adapting to multiple delve environments, running intelligence ops, and optimizing personal magic in crisis situations. Interns are high school students who are here to learn about how to be mature and ethical people. And also maybe the other stuff.”

Ben raised his eyebrows. “You think the interns won’t want to be squires?” He asked.

“Not… all of them.” Arrush coughed, clearing his throat and pressing a claw against his muzzle as he spoke. “Some… maybe. The ones who remember. Who… who my origin hurt.”

James spoke quietly. “Most of the kids are still traumatized. Most of them can heal. Hell, I think all of them can. But we don’t get there by turning them into fighters. Except maybe Brian, because that kid is… oh, hell, I dunno. Not ‘motivated’, exactly, but I think he’s actually dead set on joining as a knight for the right reasons.” He snorted a laugh as he met Arrush’s eyes. “He actually asked if he could be your squire, specifically. I think he was trying to prove a point to me.”

“I… what?” The big ratroach cocked his head to the side at an angle that would probably be lethal to a human. “What did you… say?”

“I said he’d have to ask you, so get ready for that conversation.” James’ smile became toothy as he said the words. “Anyway, the point is, everyone here, including the kids who have had time in a safe place to learn and adapt and grow past their biases, doesn’t care what species you are. But outside of here… okay, there’s gonna be a bunch of people who won’t care, or who will think it’s actively cool. And to be clear, it is cool to have a multi-species civilization. I think that is cool. Let’s not shy away from that. But there are also people who would think that certain types of human shouldn’t have rights based on genetics or nationality, much less people who aren’t human at all.” James hissed a breath through his teeth. “And I need you all to know that I can’t fix racism? Like, we’ve got plans for building a society from the ground up that can mitigate and maybe eliminate it on a functional level. But I cannot… it’s not something I can fix by punching.”

Keeka leaned forward, peering at James curiously, then he scrambled out of the cushions, his tails smoothing out his skirt like extra limbs as he crept forward and poked lightly at James arms. “Are you sure?” He asked.

There was a bark of laughter from Ben, and Arrush tried to hold in a snicker. James also laughed, but his answer was less fun. “Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. The teleporters and power plants are going to do a better job at attacking it than I am.”

Ben raised a hand. “So, what about your custom civilization?” He asked.

“Oh, I mean, in my pipe dream, we just use so many orange totems that we can fit a healthy city inside a building, and then run it the way I want.” James paused. “Sorry, that sounds flippant. Not ‘the way I want’, but, ‘the way that works’. Which is the way I want, but…”

Arrush made a clicking laugh, looking at Ben’s exasperated face. “He… does this.” The ratroach told him.

It was nice that he knew that about James. The comment actually caused James to go through a small cycle of emotions, first of feeling a small ember of affection for being recognized in that playful, friendly way by someone he cared about. And then a weird form of internal guilt for thinking that about Arrush, who he had just recently said he wasn’t prepared to start dating yet, because James absolutely recognized when he was feeling something more than just friendly affection.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“I do this.” James said instead of getting into those feelings. “Anyway. Yeah. People are people. We should treat all people like people.” He shrugged. “It doesn’t seem that hard, but apparently it is.”

“Okay, tangential question.” Ben said, mostly addressing Keeka. “Do the inhabitors bother you too?” He shot a look over at a pair of people walking through the garden, one of them someone James knew was one of the potion people.

Keeka thought about it for a second, before shaking his head. “No. Passing for - is that the right words? - passing for human is…” he struggled to find the words, and started tugging at Arrush’s arms with two of his own. “Help!” Keeka said, curling up somewhat as he lost the thread of conversation.

Arrush just settled several arms around his partner, and tried to answer. “It’s not looking… human. It’s… being normal.” He said between heavy breaths.

“Heh.” James felt a grin tugging at his mouth. “Of course you look different, you’re someone else.” He spoke with the cadence of quoting something, though he couldn’t remember what. “But yeah, I get ya. Ben seems normal until you talk to him-“

“Hey!”

“-but the inhabitors just don’t. And I think that’s kinda cool. They’re not human, and they shouldn’t have to pretend.” He turned his head, along with everyone else, as the pair that had been walking by approached their group. One of them was a woman who looked around James’ age with distinctly chinese features to her face and wide circular glasses, and the other was someone that James remembered pulling out of a burning house when the Alchemists tried to clean up their mess with excessive violence. “Hey there.” He greeted them, not knowing either of their names off the top of his head.

The girl spoke, in a very human voice that more or less confirmed James’ inclination to think she wasn’t one of the inhabitors. “Hey, you guys dissing my friend?” It was said with humor, but the kind of humor that you used on strangers when you weren’t sure if you needed it as a defense.

James shook his head. “Nah, mostly talking about the nature of humanity and personhood, and how we view each other.”

“I think that we view each other poorly.” Keeka said suddenly, staring up at the bamboo overhead, soft afternoon sunlight filtering through it. “I did it earlier. It’s very easy to think without thinking, isn’t it?” He paused, as if struck by a thought, and leaned in to whisper something to Arrush that caused the larger ratroach to give a happy grin even as small tears welled up in Keeka’s eyes.

James didn’t pry.

“Oh. Well that’s cool.” The girl nodded, her black hair framing the side of her face with motion. “Humanity kinda sucks though. But this place is better?”

“Agreed.” The inhabitor said in a voice that wasn’t quite a monotone, but was steady to the point of having almost no infliction. “Hello again.” He addressed James. “It has been some time since we spoke.”

“You two know each other?” Ben asked curiously.

“I know a lot of people!” James put a hand on his chest as he hammed up being defensive. Then he dropped back to a more serious tone. “But yeah, we’ve met. Haven’t really talked since then, but I’m glad you’re alive.”

The inhabitor gave a twitch of his chin up to indicate agreement. “Thank you. I have chosen to go by Emm now, as well.” Another sharp motion had him holding out a flat hand to the girl next to him. “This is my…” the inhabitor paused, showing apprehension for the first time. “This is Thermoclese.”

James’ eyes widened and a bit back a grin, while the girl gave him a suspicious look. “Neat!” He said. “I actually remembered hearing you claim that name a long time ago when I was talking to a camraconda, but I wasn’t sure you’d kept it. Man, there’s a lot of things around here I just didn’t keep track of.” He sighed. “Oh, hi, I’m James.”

Thermoclese paused. “Like the paladin?” She asked with half-worried curiosity.

“I don’t use the title when I’m here.” James said. “Hell, I don’t even use it anywhere, unless I need to make a dramatic speech to someone I’m locked in mortal combat with.” That was technically a lie. He hadn’t done that yet. But now he was planning to, since he was certain it was going to come up. “I’m gonna need to workshop this with Alanna…” he muttered to himself.

“Wait, so, when you say you two met…”

“Oh! I want to guess!” Keeka said, getting off the bench again to shift from paw to paw, moving with a smoothness and ease that he would eventually probably become used to, but found utterly euphoric for now. “James fought something and rescued you!”

Emm turned his head to track the ratroach. “That is not a guess.”

“I’m a little offended that you think that’s how I meet people.” James added.

“That… that is how… you meet people.” Arrush contradicted. “You met us… and Ben… and… and…” he paused and scratched at his muzzle with a clawed paw. “How did you… make friends before… being a warrior?”

James didn’t know why he was flushing red from embarrassment, but he found he was anyway. “Board game night.” He muttered. “Can we go back to any other topic? I actually did kinda wanna ask you about the name.”

“I like my name.” Thermoclese folded her arms and matched his stare. “What about it?”

“I… okay, I get that some people probably gave you shit about this, but I need to be clear here; fully half the people in this building picked their own names. I… wait, I am literally the only person here right now that didn’t! And the only reason is that I don’t know what I’d go with that would sound right? Because I don’t actually like my name that much, but it’s got all this momentum behind it, and… and…” James spread his hands like he was trying to catch the thread of conversation that he had lost. “I just wanted to ask why that name, and not anything else.”

Thermoclese softened slightly. “Oh. Uh… it sounds stupid now, because I think you put in more thought than I did. I just thought it seemed funny, and then no one told me I couldn’t, and momentum is a good way to describe it I guess.”

“I chose my name as part of a pattern.” Emm said.

“Wait, hang on.” Ben cut in. “Emm. And I’ve also met Bea, and Jay, and the dog inhabitor is Rho. Did you all just pick letters? That’s cheating!”

“How’d you pick your name?” James asked, suddenly curious.

Ben spoke on reflex. “My parents named m- no, fuck, dammit.” He pinched his forehead.

“He okay?” Thermoclese asked.

“He’s new.” Keeka explained. “It is okay. We are all working on ourselves.”

The words were strangely reassuring to Ben, especially coming from the ratroach who had been prepared to be openly hostile to him ten minutes ago. “Thanks.” He said, looking up at Keeka from his spot sitting on the floor. “Anyway, I don’t actually think I did pick my name. It’s just what people thought I should be. And then it stuck.”

“Names are like that.” Thermoclese nodded. Then she paused. “No, wait, you mean literally don’t you. This place…”

James started laughing. “Yeah, it’s pretty fun. Anyway, Ben, you want a different name?”

“No, I like this one now.” Ben sighed. “It’s too late for me to be creative. I could have been somebody.”

“…what… does that…” Arrush started to ask with a worried voice.

James held up a hand to cut him off. “No, don’t. Don’t ask. He’s being dramatic, let him work it out on his own.” He grinned and stepped out of range as Ben tried to lightly kick at him with a friendly kind of aggression.

“So, I actually did have a question.” Thermoclese said slowly, watching Ben shuffle forward as James tried to hide behind Keeka ineffectively. The remade ratroach was incredibly agile now, and it kept ending up with James back on the wrong side. Everyone stopped their antics and James gave her a ‘go ahead’ kind of motion. “We didn’t just come over here so I could get in a fight about inhabitor rights. Though sort of. You were saying that people are people, but that sort of contradicts a lot of what we know about infomorphs?”

James waited, and then cleared his throat. “Sorry, what was the question? You made it sound like a question but I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Okay, so, Research has been studying infomorphs basically since they knew about them…”

“You’re Research?” Ben asked, cutting her off. “Er. Sorry, go on.”

“We both are.” Thermoclese jerked a thumb at Emm who had been standing so still James had almost forgotten he was there. “Anyway! The three main kind we have, assignments, navigators, and authorities, all develop and present personhood differently. So, like, how do we deal with that, if you want to build a breakaway nation? Because ‘people are people’ is cute, but it’s not an actual answer when assignments aren’t created as people.”

The question was both a good one, and one that James hadn’t really prepared to answer today. “Honestly? I dunno.” He sighed. “Like, there’s a real problem with reconciling the tenet of not making life as tools, with life forms that can only be created to serve a purpose.”

“See, that’s one of the things that Reed makes into a problem, too.” Thermoclese said with an unhappy huff.

Emm gave a stiff nod. “Correct. We have too many limits on options, especially if we are to study them properly.”

“Wow, it sounds fucking creepy when you say it that way.” Ben spoke without thinking about it. He faltered as the others gave him looks. “Er… sorry, not the voice, but the… the mad scientist kinda speech. Right? No? Just me?”

“I kinda got that too.” James said. “But didn’t want to be rude.”

“Rudeness wastes time.” Emm said, with the closest thing to an expression of annoyance that James ever saw on an inhabitor. Bea had worn a similar kind of narrow eyed and thin lipped look when they were delving together. “What is uncomfortable about the statement?”

James hummed, then answered. “Mostly it implies that our ethical limits are an obstacle instead of the point, which I think puts people on edge.” He held up a hand to forstall protests. “But also, I’m interested in hearing your take on it, and I’ll hold back judgments until I do.”

“Good.” Emm nodded sharply. “We have been violating that tenet as an organization for as long as I have been here. Assignments can only be created as bindings, and must grow past their starting form. Navigators require a destination to hatch initially, and if it is not accomplished, the non-person creature dies. Authorities may eventually become people, but so far, show only mild flexible intelligence, and no ego. Infomorphs do not follow the rules that biomorphs do, and pretending otherwise is harmful to our ability to understand them.”

“I do get that.” James said. “But also, I don’t want the fact that they don’t start as people to influence our choices too much. Like, yes, I am willing to talk to Reed - actually we should have a general forum about it - about whether or not we expand infomorph testing. But also, I do firmly think that any infomorph we make, we should be entirely prepared to let mature into a person.”

It was actually Keeka who had a question to that. “Why though?” The ratroach asked. “If they are like… like…” he trailed off and shuddered.

Arrush picked up the sentence. “If they are like… the empty versions of us.” He dragged in a tired breath. “The ratroaches and crow wasps who cannot feel.” He had tensed up, and his claws were digging at the lines between his fur and chitin. “They… they did not… ask to be made. But they don’t… feel. And we kill them. Whenever we can.”

James stepped over to the bench and, gently but firmly, reached down and wrapped his hands around the pair of Arrush’s claws that were scraping at his own flanks. And then pulled those hands away, sitting next to him while Keeka did the same on the other side. “You okay?” James whispered, getting a sharp nod from Arrush. “Right. So… uh…”

“Hey, honestly, ‘don’t be like the Sewer’ is a great reason on its own.” Thermoclese said, trying to be lighthearted and failing. Her words came out stilted, but it did still help break the tension.

“I believe there is a difference of kind.” Emm added. Whether the inhabitor was emotionless, or just focused, he continued like Arrush’s mild panic wasn’t a problem. “We would not experiment on a human or ratroach child due to the trauma of it, and the organic sophoncy they possess. However, an assignment that is not maintained will fade within two weeks, without ever experiencing life. And studying this period, to know more about them, would allow us to be more precise and functional in the future. Which provides a greater amount of total compassion.”

Something struck James as a bit weird about measuring kindness that way, and he wanted to say so. “I, uh… okay, first off, that is a good point. But also, I think measuring things like compassion runs into the quantum ethics problem, where the more you try to put a value on it, the more you push against the magic circle of what it means to be alive.”

“Noted.” Emm said flatly.

“Sorry, hi, I’m new here.” Ben said coyly. “Sophoncy?”

Thermoclese gave him a rapid answer. “One of the three measures of life. Sentient is feeling, sapient is thinking, sophont is dreaming.”

“Dreaming, or dreading!” Keeka gave an addition, and reminded James that the ratroach was probably a lot smarter than he’d been giving him credit for. The change in his voice had really opened him up a lot. “Self reflection, yearning for the future that will not be, and regret for lost things. Sophoncy!” He raised his two side arms in a small cheer as he said it.

“…Kay.” Ben nodded. “So like, is there a reason we don’t just make assignments to study, and then keep them around? Doesn’t that solve every problem here?”

“Well,” Thermoclese stopped, “sorry, what was your name? I know we’re friends but I can’t remember, and that feels bad.”

“Ben. We’ve never met.”

She started nodding, then her expression shifted as she changed it into a shake of her head. “Okay, that’s uncomfortable! Well! The main problem is we don’t know if it’s a problem. Which is why we want to study the things. It’s possible that too many could overtax a human - er, organic - brain. Or that there’s some unknown danger. Or even just that assignments are predisposed to be hostile to people and we’ve just been lucky so far. Probably not that one, but we don’t know.”

James found himself fiddling with a bamboo leaf as he replied. “But we’d never know if we just cut them off before they grew up. That’s kind of my point. We can run around in circles all we want about where the line is on making life, but I do fundamentally think that we shouldn’t try to play with it. If we’re going to create someone, we should be prepared to take care of them.” He shrugged at Emm and Thermoclese. “Like, how would we feel about making more inhabitors?”

“No.” The word was still without infliction, and yet, Emm’s answer was instant and louder than any other word he’d said.

“But we could make the same arguments.” James said. “Find volunteers, or use animals that we don’t consider sophont, or something. We could poke and prod and test until we have our answers, and technically be within our rules.”

Emm tilted his head up. “The rules are incomplete.”

“The rules rely on acting in good faith.” James corrected. “We can’t litigate everything. At a certain point, we have to say ‘this society only works if we all try to get along’. Every society is based on trust in some way, they just cover it up, because trust scares people. We’re not doing that.” He sighed. “You know, we made a bunch of new paper dragons?”

“Yes. Are they not tools?”

Arrush gave a chirp of amusement, and Keeka joined him with a longer bout of ratroach laughter. “Is Thermoclese a tool because James hired her?” Keeka asked brightly.

“He wasn’t…”

“I didn’t actually…”

Keeka continued, ignoring them. “They were made to be dragons. And then we gave them food, and beds, and paper, and pets. And they give us rides, and fetch things.” He gave them a glowing smile. “If they did not, we would still care for them.” He looked up at Arrush, who he was still leaning into on the bench. “People don’t have to be useful to be valuable.”

“Are the dragons people?” Ben asked, and then got defensive as he saw James repressing a roll of his eyes. “Sorry! I don’t mean… I mean, are they sophont, I guess!”

“Oh. No. They are like dogs.” Keeka said. “Good dogs that can fly someday.”

“I cannot express how much I wish I could put that on my business cards.” James said with a grin. “But also, I think what Keeka’s getting at is that our relationship isn’t transactional. Even though I’m still iffy on the ethics of ‘working animals’, what we’re doing is a lot like that. We aren’t trading survival for work, we’re providing survival, and a little more, and they provide something for us because they want to. If we make a lazy dragon, then that’s fine. I empathize immensely with wanting to lounge around all day eating composition notebooks. And I think it’s safe to apply that to infomorphs, too. Like, go ahead, make an assignment to study how they grow and change! But just realize that when they’re grown up, they’re going to be part of our family, not a test subject.”

Ben cleared his throat. “So, I’ll be honest, I kinda just assumed that you were collecting people from the dungeons. We make infomorphs? I mean, I know we make authorities. But the others?”

James nodded. “Navigators come from Route Horizon, as a loot drop. Assignments come from Officium Mundi, as a… uh…” he trailed off.

“Unintended consequence.” Emm filled in.

“Beautiful emergent property.” Thermoclese corrected. Or added, maybe.

With a cheerful laugh, James pulled away from Arrush and stood again, starting to pace as he spoke. “Yeah, so, when an assignment is made, it basically acts as a compulsion on one person. If it’s not fed - either other infomorphs or more purple orbs - then it fades in a couple weeks, like Thermy said.”

“No.” The girl folded her arms.

“Like Thermoclese said.” James didn’t falter. “They can divide to new minds pretty easily, and in fact, I think can be incepted into two people at once. After they’re grown, they get better at manipulating memories and behaviors, manifesting, and feeding off organized information. Navigators are kind of the same; formed with a specific purpose to take you somewhere. But they always feed off journeys and explorations, and once you go to their first destination, it gives them enough strength to choose to fully step into personhood. Which is weird!” James cheerfully rambled. “They get to pick if they’re people! I wish I’d gotten to pick if I was people.”

“Would you?” Arrush asked.

James paused. “Well, probably.” He admitted. “Not the point. Anyway, what I find interesting is how assignments always manifest as deep sea creatures somehow, and preference green and blue colors, while navigators manifest as avians, and tend toward oranges? There is no reason for this, I just find it cool.”

Thermoclese nodded excitedly. “It is cool! Also, navigators only really manifest away from your body if they’re showing up as lines of light. Anything more complex, and they’re bound to you.”

“Oh yeah! Zhu does that all the time!” James looked down at his arms. “He’s sleeping now. So no demonstration.”

Emm spoke again without preamble, which was a little jarring for James who was used to people making small noises or gestures to punctuate. But he’d live with it. “You are still ignoring that infomorph life does not function the same as you. Making policy that applies the same to everyone, regardless of circumstance, is wrong.”

“Oh!” James drew the word out in a long note of realization. “Yeah, sorry, I misunderstood I think. We know. I know. The only blanket statement is that every person has value, and their desire for freedom and self determination should be respected, insofar as it does not ruin someone else’s. But that still doesn’t mean you can incept a dozen assignments just to make notes on them and let them fade out.”

Thermoclese slouched in an exaggerated bout of frustration. “Fine, we’ll figure something else out.” She said. “Also we are actually late. Come on Emm, Reed has us running yet more teleporter tests.”

“Thrilling.” The inhabitor’s voice made it near impossible to determine the presence of sarcasm as the two of them headed off to another part of the basement. But James was close to certain that this was sincere.

“I’ve also gotta get back to work. I owe Mars dirt.” Ben said, easily rising from where he’d been sitting on the floor and dusting himself off. “Thanks for the distraction. Uh…” the false human gave Arrush a tentative smile. “Sorry again?” Arrush just nodded, the ratroach looking like he didn’t actually have anything else to say. “Okay. Well, see ya.” For someone who was a memetically enforced friend, Ben was surprisingly awkward in breaking off conversations.

James shook his head in amusement as they watched Ben ‘leave’ to a spot about fifty feet away, still visible through the rows of freshly planted bamboo, and get back to work moving a wheelbarrow full of sacks of potting soil. “I feel like every different part of Ben I learn about is a new contradictory facet.” He muttered. “Well, whatever. I should go get lunch, I think I’m hungry, but it’s been hard to tell lately.” He smiled at Keeka and Arrush. “What’re you two up to today? Anything fun?”

“We are sitting and talking.” Keeka said, then realized he was still standing, jolted slightly, and scurried back over to the bench to sit back down. “It is nice!”

“Talking about… me.” Arrush added. “What I want to change into.” His voice sounded a little apprehensive. “What I can… be.”

“Anything!” Keeka said in his airy voice, like he was reminding his boyfriend of something they’d been over. “Everyone will still love you! Look! I still look like me, and it is okay!”

James nodded, tapping at his chin. “It’s true. Don’t think you need to make yourself look human or anything. You really can do whatever you want around here. Look at Momo; she gets away with having a wardrobe of literal robes.”

“Different.” Arrush rasped, coughing out a chuckle.

“Still funny!” James added. “Anyway, I’m gonna head out. You two have fun. Maybe don’t make yourself any taller though; you’ll have trouble with doors.” He saw Arrush tilt his head away and glare at the concrete floor. “More trouble with doors.” James corrected.

Before he left, he gave the two of them a hug that was only a little awkward because they were sitting and he wasn’t. It was pleasant, having time with people when they weren’t in armor and feeling metaphorically spiky. Though he was a bit worried that Keeka had no intention of letting go of his leg to let him make his escape.

Eventually though, James pulled back, said one last goodbye, and headed in the direction he was pretty sure the elevator was in.

Before he got there, he ran into Alanna. His girlfriend, resplendently outfitted in a simple grey shirt and jeans, was pulling a cart laden with cardboard boxes, and being followed by a pair of kids. The older, probably a late teenager, looked an awful lot like a smaller version of Alanne herself, while the younger one was maybe just into her teens, had a vague similarity, but had different colored hair and a kind of almost unhealthy looking slimness to her face and body that the others were missing.

“Hey!” Alanna greeted James with a smile that was so purely happy that he couldn’t help but return it as she stopped the cart with one foot stuck out behind her, and angled her head down for a kiss that made James feel like he was being enveloped by his partner. “Fancy meeting you here.” She said as they pulled away from each other.

“Same. Helping people move in?”

“Yep!” Alanna cheerfully, pointing to the two girls behind her. “This is Erin, and the kid is Rae. Technically, they’re my sisters.”

“Technically?” James cocked an eyebrow.

“Well they don’t really remember me all the way, and also they’re horrible little gremlins.” Alanna explained.

Erin punched her sister in the arm, with the kind of force that James figured would have been actually painful, but didn’t even make Alanna’s smile twitch. “Hey!” The teenager burst out. “You can’t just tell random people that!”

“I’m hardly that random.” James said, giving a small wave. “Hi. I’m dating your sister. How’re you liking knowing magic is real?”

“This place is so cool!” The younger sister shoved both the older Byrne’s aside to stare at James with wide dancing eyes. “You have a secret basement!”

James gave a sage nod, trying to seem like a mysterious wizard as hard as he possibly could. “It’s true.” He admitted. He shifted to the side as a few people walked by them in the hallway, and he watched with amusement as both the new kids locked their eyes on the camraconda in the passing group. “Cool, huh?” He asked, and Rae gave an uninhibited nod. “So, you two are gonna be living here?”

“Yeah, our mom sucks.” Alanna answered him. “Also I’m working on a plan to co-opt the state’s foster care system?” She sounded almost embarrassed about that. “Uh… tangentially related. I guess.”

James thunked his shoulder into hers. “I’ll help. Just point me in the right direction.” He said. “That’s my job!”

“Oh!” Alanna snapped her fingers. “That reminds me, Sarah’s looking for you. Some podcast thing.”

“Sarah knows I have a phone, right?”

“Do you?” Alanna asked. “Do you really? You didn’t get it shot again? Or crushed? Or thrown into a lake? Or…” She ignored the unbelieving eye roll from her youngest sister

“I’m not that bad.” James tried to defend himself, and then saw Alanna’s sisters staring at him with different shades of weird looks. “I get shot at sometimes. It’s fine.” He explained. “Anyway, I know I have a phone because Anesh called me this morning. He says hi, and he loves us, by the way. And Sarah can just call me.”

“Yeah but this is easier.” Alanna shrugged. “I think her anxiety weakness is phone calls.”

“Fine, I’ll go find your girlfriend.” James was going to sigh dramatically but couldn’t hold in a small companionable smirk as Alanna’s face flushed. “Wow, yeah, this is fun. Now I get why you’ve been shipping me with everyone. This is great. I’m gonna do this so much more, assuming you’re not actually uncomfortable.”

Alanna’s older sister made a dramatic “Ahem” that was clearly fake and meant to capture their attention. “Why are you dating so many people?” She asked her sister. “How many boyfriends do you have?”

“Because I can and I want to?” Alanna said like it was obvious.

James nodded in agreement. “Also she only has two boyfriends, unless you count copies, in which case she has five. And I know this because unlike your sister, I can count boyfriends. She also has one girlfriend, who is not my girlfriend, just my regular best friend. It’s been great to tease her about.” He snuck a peck of a kiss on Alanna’s neck. “Anyway. You need help moving stuff?”

“No, this is basically it. I’ll grab some furniture from storage for them after this. Or just teleport a couch in.” Alanna shrugged, and James refrained from pointing out that you had to be carrying stuff to teleport with it via telepad. Because, as she wrapped an arm around him in a hug, he was reminded that Alanna probably could lift a couch by herself. Especially if it was a sectional in pieces. “Anyway, go find Sarah! She’s in the recording studio!” Alanna said, grabbing the handle of the laden cart and getting it moving again. “Come on you goblins, let’s get you moved in.” Her sisters followed her, giving James a nod and a distracted wave as they passed.

“Heh.” James chuckled to himself as he started back down the basement corridor. “Oh, wait. Shit.” He glanced back, seeing that Alanna was already out of sight as a thought struck him. Before he forgot, he pulled out his phone and sent her a quick text reminding her that some of the furniture in storage down here was from the Underburbs, and maybe don’t touch that stuff.

And then he headed off to find his friend. Lunch could wait.

Days like this were partly what James lived for. It was just… nice. He could spend hours talking to people, doing nothing in particular. If there was a task he could add to, he would. But otherwise, he was free to just relax. There was no crisis, no fight that he needed to be part of. He could just wander the Lair, and pick up bits and pieces of interesting things.

They’d built a home that was, in a way that was hard to describe and harder to quantify, magical. And spending his time in it was perhaps the perfect way for James to decompress.

Then he had to take a detour because part of the hallway system down here was closed due to flooding from a Research project gone wrong, and he revised his estimation that it was entirely relaxing.

But it was still a good day.